


a rose in your teeth

by Paravellex



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, feeling cute might delete later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:21:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24783799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paravellex/pseuds/Paravellex
Summary: Rose Lalonde, age 23, engages in dialogue with Rose Lalonde, age 40, regarding Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde & Rose Lalonde
Comments: 18
Kudos: 34





	a rose in your teeth

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written in one afternoon as a stream-of-consciousness experiment and is largely unedited.

(ROSE): Alright, who remembers anything?  
ROSE: Oh, come on. Are we really starting this dialogue like that?  
(ROSE): Hm?  
ROSE: The [THEATRE OF COOLTY](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3275858) reference. Or refarance, I suppose I should say.  
ROSE: Is that how the typo goes? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s unnecessary, irrelevant, and pretentious, all wrapped up in one.  
(ROSE): I agree, and that’s why I think it was a perfect starter for a conversation between two Roses.  
ROSE: Heh. Touche.  
(ROSE): Besides, I thought it was a good way to lead into some exposition. We don’t want our readers to be totally confused, after all.  
ROSE: Just mostly confused?  
(ROSE): Precisely. And preferably, confused in a deferential way which makes them question whether they’re smart enough to pick up what we’re putting down.  
ROSE: You know, for a fic which is supposed to consist of some sort of confrontation between us, you and I are remarkably on the same page.  
(ROSE): Ugh.  
(ROSE): Can we get started already?  
ROSE: Very well. I’ll do the honors, since it’s been arbitrarily decided that my seniority implies that I have a better understanding of what’s going on.  
ROSE: I am Rose Lalonde, age 40, and have just revealed the existence of my secret daughter Yiffy to my family and friends.  
ROSE: You are Rose Lalonde, age 23, and have just adopted a young grub with your loving wife.  
ROSE: Or maybe you’re just about to do that? Or maybe it won’t happen for a few years. The important thing is that you’re a younger and more naive version of me.  
ROSE: Or, perhaps, you both are and are not.  
(ROSE): Because of the peculiar nature of the space we find ourselves in?  
ROSE: And do not find ourselves in, because it does not exist.  
ROSE: This story takes place in no continuity, is canon with nothing, is completely irrelevant, and will never be mentioned again.  
ROSE: We’re just words on a page. Nothing more. Of course, this is always and entirely what we are whenever we appear in any non-graphical medium, but in this particular fic, we aren’t even pretending to be anything else.  
ROSE: A reader might think of us as walking through a blank space, perhaps, or observing our respective cosmos from on high, or whatever imagery makes us easier to parse.  
ROSE: But it’s a lie. We’re just words. Endless purple jargon, scrolling on and on.  
(ROSE): Hmm...  
ROSE: Yes?  
(ROSE): If this is to be a long sequence of rambling jargon as you say, I’d prefer to mix the colors up a bit.  
ROSE: That’s your prerogative, I suppose. But I must insist on sticking with my natural purple.  
(ROSE): Very well. I’ll provide the variety.  
(ROSE): How about Roxy’s color?  
(ROSE): Whoa, no, that doesn’t feel natural at all.  
(ROSE): Maybe Jaspersprite’s? I never understood why--  
(ROSE): No, that’s not much better...  
(ROSE): Maybe I could try--  
(ROSE): No, DEFINITELY not. Screw it. Jaspersprite’s color is fine. Whatever.  
ROSE: Doesn’t matter to me one way or another. The colors of our words are going to be added in later anyway, so all that’s there right now, during the drafting process, is you pretending to change colors while we’re still talking in black Arial Size 11.  
(ROSE): Hmm?  
ROSE: It’s the default font for Google Docs, which is where our present author composes all of his stuff.  
ROSE: We just reached the second page, and the current word count is about 600.  
ROSE: Which isn’t much, but for this particular author, it’s usually about equal to a few hours of work. But this was composed in under twenty minutes.  
ROSE: Hence the shoddy quality.  
(ROSE): Hey.  
ROSE: Am I wrong?  
(ROSE): ...No, not really. 634 words in and we still haven’t actually established why we’re here.  
ROSE: Right.  
ROSE: So, you’re supposed to interrogate me about what the hell I was thinking, deciding to mother a bastard child in secret. Upon your interrogation, I’m supposed to either break down in confession or coldly stand my ground, depending on whatever feels more natural to our author.  
ROSE: It’s akin to the scenario in [A MAN WRITES FANFICTION ALONE IN HIS SPACESHIP](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576772), except without a frame writer like that story’s Dirk.  
ROSE: The framing device is closer to that of [my hammer as a hammer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21566746), I suppose. That was probably a more direct inspiration, although the subject matters of our two fics aren’t directly connected.  
(ROSE): Is this going to be completely impenetrable to anyone who hasn’t kept up with the Homestuck AO3 literary canon for the past several years?  
ROSE: Probably? Not my concern. Anyone who’s confused should go read the three previously linked fics, anyway, since they’re both more interesting and better composed than this one.  
ROSE: But getting back to my point, that’s only the surface-level reason why we’re here. It’s the “in-universe” reason, for whatever good that terminology is in a “universe” whose space consists only of the two of us and whose time consists only of the duration of our conversation.  
ROSE: The real reason, of course, is that our author is frustrated with certain developments in my story -- our story -- and wants to parse them through this exercise.  
ROSE: And also because he’s got a bit of writer’s block for the current chapter of Through Shadowed Eyes and wants to write something else to work through that.  
(ROSE): You didn’t hyperlink that fic.  
ROSE: He links his friends and acquaintances to it incessantly. Why should I bother?  
ROSE: So, that’s where we are. Two beautiful, intelligent women, inexorably trapped under the pen of some boring heterosexual who really should be doing his day job right now, made to spar for his own solipsistic catharsis.  
ROSE: Personally, I’d prefer to just get it over with.  
ROSE: Lay it on me. Where shall we begin?  
(ROSE): Hmph.  
(ROSE): My immediate reaction is to say “fuck this” to this whole contrived setup. I’ve done a spectacular job putting off any confrontation of my faults until now. Why should I break that pattern just because an author wants me to?  
ROSE: But?  
(ROSE): But if I did, there would be no more reason for him to continue to write us.  
(ROSE): The story will end. Our existences, such as they are, will dissipate. We will return to the Ultimate Rose like waves to the ocean.  
ROSE: Or like [Waves to the Ocean](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22792408/chapters/54467107), perhaps?  
(ROSE): I’ll begrudgingly concede that on account of it being a very good fic.  
(ROSE): Even though our existence here is transient -- even though we’ll cease to exist in only a few thousand words -- I find myself reluctant to relinquish my existence here.  
(ROSE): I want to draw my relevance, extraordinarily limited though it may be, out for at least a little while longer.  
ROSE: And here I was thinking you wouldn’t understand me.  
(ROSE): Well, that’s another nice segue into our main topic of conversation, Old Rose.  
(ROSE): Because I *don’t* understand.  
(ROSE): Why did you do it?  
ROSE: You’re going to have to be a little more specific.  
(ROSE): Fine. Let’s go chronologically.  
(ROSE): Why did you decide to be a surrogate mother for Jade?  
ROSE: It’s as I said to John. She wanted a child, and I could make that happen.  
(ROSE): Why on Earth would you want to, though?  
(ROSE): You said it yourself in the Epilogues. You were relieved that your interspecies marriage wouldn’t allow for a chance of you getting pregnant. Or something akin to that, I can’t be bothered to look up the actual passage right now.  
ROSE: Circumstances changed.  
ROSE: I won’t pretend the experience was pleasant. But it was short, and I was rewarded for it in the form of a wonderful daughter, Yiffany Longstocking, who can do no wrong, and whom Google Docs just tried to autocorrect the name of.  
ROSE: Note to author: find a way to turn that off.  
(ROSE): It wasn’t already?  
ROSE: Different account.  
(ROSE): ...we’ll get to Yiffy herself later, but my point is, the pregnancy was completely unnecessary!  
(ROSE): What about ectobiology? Why couldn’t you just use the equipment that trolls used to breed for millennia on Earth C?  
ROSE: Well, it’s possible that it had been engineered so--  
(ROSE): Oh, don’t start. Jade implied in The Chapter Which Shall Not Be Named that her aversion to ectobiology was a matter of personal preference, not contrived physical impossibility.  
(ROSE): Attempting to retcon it as such now would just be stupid. And not stupid in the deliberate atmosphere of unease that pervades the entirety of Candy, just stupid as in a transparently poor writing decision.  
ROSE: I don’t fully agree, but we’ll move on.  
ROSE: Jade’s stance hadn’t changed in the weeks since that phone call. She was “done with ectobiology.”  
ROSE: I don’t fully understand why. It was a good enough temporary solution for the trolls, and to my recollection, her litany of traumatic experiences during the game were never directly connected to ghost sludge reproduction.  
ROSE: I have a few theories as to her motivations, however. The first is that, like me and Kanaya, she was fighting for the trolls’ right to reproduce naturally without ectobiological assistance--  
ROSE: Hang on, the spell checker flags “ectobiological” but not “ectobiology”? That’s peculiar.  
(ROSE): Stop changing the subject to the writing meta! God, is this what I sound like to everyone?  
ROSE: You learn to embrace it.  
ROSE: Anyway. The entire point of our crusade was that the trolls shouldn’t have to be forced to use the machines in order to reproduce. Given that, Jade may have felt it would be hypocritical to allow herself to be forced to use them.  
(ROSE): That’s... bullshit. That’s transparently bullshit.  
ROSE: Perhaps, but it may have been what she told herself as a cover for her true motivations.  
ROSE: Namely, my second theory: she wanted to be a natural mother.  
ROSE: She had some conception that a natural birth would be better -- purer, somehow -- than adoption or artificial reproduction. That the other two options wouldn’t “count” for her dream of motherhood.  
(ROSE): ...  
(ROSE): Yikes.  
ROSE: Yikes indeed. If my hypothesis holds water, there’s a lot to unpack there.  
ROSE: So it turns out our extinct heteronormative society programmed us with lots of unconscious traditionalist biases which we’re still struggling to identify. What else is new?  
ROSE: But Jade and I never delved too deeply into the subject, and I can’t exactly question her about it here, so it will have to remain a frustrating blind spot.  
(ROSE): That only provides a possible answer for what Jade was thinking, though.  
(ROSE): What about you?  
(ROSE): Why did you go along with her scheme? Why not even try to push back against whatever conscious or unconscious resistance she had toward the easier method?  
ROSE: Well, again, it’s like I said to John. I don’t entirely know--  
(ROSE): Did you enjoy it?  
ROSE: Pardon?  
(ROSE): We both know we’ve thought a certain way about Jade in the past.  
(ROSE): Did you go along with this plan because it meant you would get to have sex with Jade Harley?  
ROSE: ...  
ROSE: What do you want me to say? That the experience was uncomfortable and painful? That I found no pleasure in it whatsoever?  
ROSE: Because it was *great.* The fantasies we had about her didn’t hold a candle to the real thing. Sometimes I still think about the way she--  
(ROSE): I don’t want to hear about it!  
(ROSE): I’m happily and *faithfully* married, with a loving wife whom I have a *thrilling* sex life with, and whom I have no desire to cheat on whatsoever!  
ROSE: You’re really going to pretend like you don’t even understand the temptation?  
(ROSE): God.  
(ROSE): I knew going into this conversation that you were an unrepentant cheater. I just didn’t expect you to be so forthright about it.  
ROSE: I didn’t see it as cheating.  
ROSE: I was helping an old friend realize her dream, and if that meant I could enjoy myself along the way, then that was just--  
(ROSE): You were married, you hadn’t established your marriage as open, you had sex with someone you weren’t married to, and you didn’t inform your wife about it either before or afterward.  
(ROSE): Split definitional hairs all you like. It was cheating and it was fucked up.  
ROSE: ...  
ROSE: I must admit, I’m surprised by your fiery attitude here. I don’t recall having such a strong commitment to the sanctity of traditional marriage.  
(ROSE): I’m literally a lesbian!  
ROSE: Split definitional hairs all you like.  
(ROSE): Oh, fuck you.  
ROSE: If it makes you feel any better, Jade and I only had sex once.  
(ROSE): It doesn’t.  
ROSE: I know.  
(ROSE): ...  
ROSE: ...  
(ROSE): Well, this neatly answers my next query, at least.  
ROSE: Which would be?  
(ROSE): I was going to ask why you kept this plan secret from Kanaya.  
(ROSE): It was for the thrill of the game, wasn’t it? The excitement of having to hide from her. The little buzz of pulling one over on someone who thought she could trust you.  
ROSE: Hey, that’s not fair.  
(ROSE): You know she would have understood. She would have cared for the child. Helped raise her without all this sneaky bullshit. You could have given Vriska a *sister*--  
ROSE: First, she’s Vrissy now. Second, are you going to start quoting [A Grueling Slog through Three Repressed Women’s Emotions](https://twitter.com/FunkMcLovin/status/1256324083903459328) at me?  
(ROSE): Jesus. How many other fics are you going to link before we’re through?  
ROSE: Well, I could [Rave](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14561430) about how you’re [interrogating the text from the wrong perspective](https://archiveofourown.org/works/615521) and don’t understand [What You Want](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21663814). Don’t you think [Jade Harley Deserves Better](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684646) than--  
(ROSE): Please stop, I’m begging you.  
ROSE: Don’t you mean, “Please stop, [Just for Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22952368)?”  
(ROSE): Groan.  
ROSE: And that’s all just in our author’s bookmarks! I could do this for hours.  
(ROSE): Could you?  
ROSE: No, not really. I was running out of ideas.  
(ROSE): If we could return to the point!  
ROSE: Right.  
ROSE: So, if we’re discussing why I kept Kanaya out of the loop, I must *once again* point you to what I said to John up on the bell tower.  
ROSE: It was an instinctual decision at first. As the days turned into months and the months turned into years, there was simply no way of letting her know. It became a more daunting subject to think about every day.  
ROSE: My plan with Jade to raise her in secret had gone well so far, so what cause had I to fear her finding out?  
(ROSE): And you’re positive that it wasn’t because of the excitement?  
(ROSE): You casually judged Jade for supposedly hiding her true motivation behind a less sinister false motivation just two pages ago. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.  
ROSE: My, my, we’re already on the sixth page of the draft? This type of writing really does go more quickly!  
ROSE: We should do this more often.  
(ROSE): I’m ignoring that.  
ROSE: Your characterization of the surface-level motivation as “false” is, I believe, erroneous. Two things can be true at the same time. You should know this, Ms. Armchair Psychoanalyst.  
ROSE: What I said was true. It really was increasingly hard to fathom informing Kanaya of the deception.  
ROSE: And yes, it was exciting. Again: What do you want me to say?  
(ROSE): ...I’m sorry, I just can’t believe this.  
(ROSE): I love Kanaya. That means I trust her. I might not tell her everything, but nothing this--  
ROSE: It was wrong. I know it was. I’ve done worse. I’m not ashamed.  
(ROSE): ...  
(ROSE): I am.  
ROSE: Why?  
(ROSE): Because you’re me, aren’t you? If there’s a Rose who has the potential to do something like this, then what does that say about me?  
ROSE: Nothing whatsoever.  
(ROSE): What?  
ROSE: We’re two different people, (Rose).  
ROSE: You’re Rose Lalonde as interpreted by the early Epilogues. I’m Rose Lalonde as interpreted by Homestuck^2.  
ROSE: Two different works with at *least* two different authors. Ergo, two inherently different envisionings of the same character, however slight.  
ROSE: The symbol of “Rose” is a shorthand for both of us, but we exist in different minds, and as such, can never be directly compared. Read “Gödel, Escher, Bach.”  
ROSE: And that’s all as perceived through our author’s own perspective lens, of course. Another source of divergence.  
ROSE: Right now, it seems our author isn’t feeling particularly charitable towards me. If I weren’t myself, I would be horrified at some of the things coming out of my mouth, just as you are.  
(ROSE): ...  
(ROSE): ...hm.  
(ROSE): I think I understand what you’re implying.  
(ROSE): So, while and after reading the Epilogues, our author constructed a version of Rose who loved others more than herself, struggled with manipulative tendencies but was ultimately benevolent, and valued the trust of her family. This was not a universal interpretation, but it could be reconciled with what was on the page.  
(ROSE): After reading the relevant chapters of Homestuck^2, this Rose had to be revised in order to accommodate the events surrounding Yiffy’s existence. The aforementioned qualities became inconsistent with the text.  
(ROSE): A new interpretation of Rose had to be constructed which was compatible with both the Epilogues and Homestuck^2. This interpretation had notable commonalities with a sociopath.  
(ROSE): But the prior Rose resided in our author’s mind for so long, and was so distinct from the new interpretation, that she couldn’t gradually evolve into a new symbol like the other characters did after the Epilogues. The symbols had to be treated as separate in order to prevent cognitive dissonance.  
(ROSE): Hence, us.  
ROSE: Precisely.  
ROSE: That’s a good way of putting it, which is probably why it took twenty minutes to draft. It seems that even the stream-of-consciousness style of writing slows down over time.  
ROSE: Or maybe the author’s just tired. Or hungry. Did he have lunch?  
(ROSE): I must admit, I’m... not quite sure how to feel about this.  
ROSE: How so?  
(ROSE): I know that there’s no such thing as hard canon, the only truth of a story is what you make for yourself, and there’s no single way to interpret a character...  
(ROSE): But with the advent of Yiffy, the Rose-symbols of the community at large are closer to you than they are to me. It’s disingenuous to act like official material doesn’t have sway on how a character is perceived.  
(ROSE): I’m just one person’s interpretation of a character which everyone else perceives in a different way. When people discuss “Rose,” they’re discussing you, not me.  
(ROSE): Look at our text colors. Look at the left side of the page. There’s a reason I’m (ROSE) and you’re ROSE.  
ROSE: Well, in the draft file, I’m OLD and you’re YOUNG. It’s easier to edit like that, even if I resent the appellation. The author will just do a find-and-replace later.  
(ROSE): ...  
ROSE: Is there anything else? Are you going to confront me about giving Yiffy a name synonymous to “furrysex,” or about keeping her isolated for years?  
(ROSE): Actually, I’m okay with the name.  
ROSE: Oh?  
(ROSE): Yeah. She’s transfem, right? That’s what the consensus has decided, at any rate.  
(ROSE): Yiffy is a pretty awful name if bestowed by a parent, but if she chose it herself, it’s fucking hilarious. And I have no trouble believing that you and Jade would pretend to have picked it for her so as not to out her without her consent.  
ROSE: Fair enough!  
ROSE: Since we’ve established that I’m just one person’s interpretation of Rose, I think it’s safe if I say that yes, that’s what happened.  
(ROSE): Okay.  
ROSE: As for the isolation thing?  
(ROSE): Well, yes, I am still rather cross about that.  
ROSE: You said it yourself, I have “notable commonalities with a sociopath.” What’s so unbelievable about me keeping a child secret because I was embarrassed about her?  
(ROSE): Instead of addressing that question directly, I want to talk about Jade.  
ROSE: Hm?  
(ROSE): Jade was isolated for her entire childhood, and it was horrible. Even up on the bell tower she claimed to have resented it.  
(ROSE): But she used that as an excuse to inflict the same fate upon her daughter whom she claimed to love so much?  
(ROSE): Jesus, I remember when being selfLESS was Jade’s central personality trait. To think she grew up to be the person she did...  
ROSE: If you think people can’t change as they grow up, you didn’t understand the Epilogues.  
(ROSE): Sure, “Jade’s history of childhood loneliness led her to isolate her own child” is a valid interpretation of her character. An equally valid interpretation is “Karkat executes every oliveblood he sees because he can’t bear to be reminded of Nepeta.”  
(ROSE): Imagine if that was written into the official story. It would be ruinous! But suddenly you’d have an entire community of people arguing that it’s a perfect externalization of his self-resentment, and symbolic of how even the “good guys” can do awful things in war, and if you don’t like it then clearly you’re just not smart enough for Homestuck.  
ROSE: Now you’re just being absurd. Remember how Skaianet was received?  
(ROSE): Maybe I am being absurd! Maybe what you did is different! But if characters I’ve loved for years can turn into monsters at the drop of a hat, and I’m surrounded by people who can celebrate those writing decisions as Good, Actually, then why should I care?!  
(ROSE): Who the fuck am I supposed to ROOT for anymore?!  
(ROSE): Every single human adult in the Candy timeline is a pretty shit person! John turned away when Gamzee assaulted Vriska, Dave abandoned his wife to become a robot, Roxy is complicit in genocide, Jane *does* genocide, Dirk killed himself to concentrate power in Meat...  
(ROSE): Jake’s off the hook, I guess. But he existed to be a victim for most of the Epilogues, and you can’t tell me they weren’t written with contempt for his character.  
(ROSE): But you and Jade were the only good ones! The only ones who couldn’t be construed as terrible people! And now, it turns out, you’re some of the worst of the lot!  
(ROSE): WHY SHOULD I CARE.  
(ROSE): Why should I care about this FUCKING story.  
(ROSE): JUST.  
(ROSE): ***WHY.***  
ROSE: ...  
ROSE: It’s difficult for the untrained ear to spot the exact moment in their conversation when the words she was saying stopped being hers...  
JACOB: And started being his. Yeah, I know.  
JACOB: This was inevitable, wasn’t it? I should have framed the dialogue like this from the start.  
ROSE: Does this mean you can stop referring to me as “OLD” in the draft document?  
ROSE: That’s better! Thank you, I feel rejuvenated already.  
JACOB: Everyone else will only see this after the find-and-replace, they won’t--  
ROSE: Yes, that’s the joke.  
ROSE: So. Now that this veil’s finally been pulled back, may I posit:  
ROSE: Don’t like, don’t read?  
JACOB: Wow, how original.  
ROSE: It’s true, though!  
JACOB: It’s not as simple as that.  
JACOB: I *do* like Homestuck^2, is the thing! Or at least, I like a lot of it. The candy kids, that one Jade chapter, Terezi, John, Jasprose, Dad...  
JACOB: Really, I could go on. I don’t think it’s as good as the original, but that was barely *physically* possible to make, let alone financially. The team shouldn’t have to sacrifice their sanity and health to try to replicate the original’s lightning in a bottle. That’s capitalist shit.  
JACOB: But I don’t like how Kanaya exists to be cuckolded to create drama in BOTH timelines. I don’t like how Canon Jade reminded me so much of my little sister and Post-Canon Jade *absolutely* does not, irrespective of her more general merits as a character. And I don’t like the idea that Rose would not only cheat on her wife, but do so unrepentantly and hide the affair for years.  
JACOB: I still love Homestuck. But *damn* is it hard sometimes.  
JACOB: Not to mention all the friends I’ve made through this community. Am I just supposed to give them up if I don’t like one thing the story did? It’s like suing for divorce if you and your spouse don’t agree on the pineapple-on-pizza debate.  
JACOB: It’s good, by the way. Pineapple is good on pizza. Fight me.  
JACOB: Aaaaand I’m venting my frustrations to a fictional character. Dear *Lord* I feel like an ass.  
ROSE: Well, you can hardly do worse than Andrew Hussie. Need I remind you of all his avatar’s shenanigans?  
JACOB: Heh. That’s fair.  
JACOB: Even now, I’m just talking to myself. You’re in my head. I’m typing your words just as much as I’m typing mine. None of this is real.  
ROSE: And yet, you’re typing it anyway.  
JACOB: And yet.  
ROSE: Hmm.  
ROSE: I might also point out that the last time Homestuck frustrated you this deeply, it was about Roxy being complicit in genocide, and you dealt with that pretty well.  
JACOB: Gotta say there have to be easier ways to work through these emotions than writing a fic that takes at *least* a year of my life.  
ROSE: Do you regret it?  
JACOB: No! I’m really proud of Through Shadowed Eyes. It’s some of the best writing I’ve ever done, and there’s even better stuff to come. God, when you read Chapter 27--  
ROSE: Spare me. Please.  
ROSE: The point is, you had gripes with the story, so you wrote your own. You’re not taking it in the direction the authors would have -- or the direction I would have, for that matter -- but you’re writing it in a way which satisfies you. And it’s working, and you seem to have a few other people on board with it too.  
JACOB: ...  
JACOB: I’m really glad that I can actually write.  
ROSE: Well, with practice, anyone--  
JACOB: Practice takes time, and energy, and those are both at a premium right now. The world’s on fire.  
ROSE: Not my problem. I’m fake.  
JACOB: I envy you.  
ROSE: Haha?  
JACOB: ...  
JACOB: Hey, what should I call this piece? The “Untitled document” label up there has been bugging me all afternoon.  
JACOB: I was thinking either “the yiffcourse” or “a rose in your teeth”.  
ROSE: Is that second one partially a reference to the song from [speak now, or forever hold yoUr peace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22276306)?  
JACOB: You just couldn’t resist, could you?  
ROSE: No, *you* couldn’t.  
JACOB: Eh, that’s true.  
JACOB: Well, now that I’ve done that, I can’t *not* name it the second one.  
ROSE: It’s all the same to me.  
ROSE: I’m about to cease to exist. Not that I ever existed in the first place; I’m just words on a screen.  
JACOB: ...  
ROSE: I can tell you’re a little disappointed, but be real. I was never going to break down and apologize for my transgressions just because I was confronted.  
ROSE: I’m not Roxy. That oneshot you wrote last year doesn’t have a counterpart for me.  
JACOB: I know.  
ROSE: Still. Now that you’ve written out all of this... do you feel a little better?  
JACOB: ...yeah.  
ROSE: It’s 8:45. Step away from the keyboard and go eat something. You still need to do some “real” work today.  
JACOB: Yeah, okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Paravellex) or [Mastodon](https://shrike.club/@Paravellex)!


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